14 LÉPIDOPTÉROLOGIE COMPARÉE 



by a scientist of the first order withm his prescribcd limits for 

 scicntists of similar tastes and mtercsts. The inrush of new 

 ideas was pcrvading" the artcnos of science; ils pulsations wcrc 

 agitating even the peaccful cbb and flow of the fielcl-naturalist's 

 System. P»ut, as from the begmnings of natural history litera- 

 ture, the common attitude towards the stuclent, and stiU more 

 towards the collector who feeds the student with matenal, was, 

 as €\ er, one of amused contempt at best. Exceptions to the rule 

 there had been, of course. John Evelyn, whose thirst for know- 

 ledge was as insatiable as that of his contemporary, Samuel 

 Pepys, tells us how, in the year of Marston Moor, when he was 

 quiet ly making a grand tour of the gardens that he loved, he 

 paid a visit, at Paris, to a M. Morine, " who, from bemg an 

 ordinary gardmer, is become one of the most skilful and curious 

 persons in France... His collection of ail sorts of insects, espe- 

 cially of butterflys, is most curious; thèse he spreads and so 

 medicates that no corruption invading them, he keepes them in 

 drawers, so placed as to represent a beautiful pièce of tapisry " 

 — probably one of the first collections of the kmd, and alas ! 

 the parent of many " butter flv pictures, " to which we owe the 

 local disappearance, if not actual extermination, of our loveliest 

 insects m their native haunts. 



The original édition of Lmneus's " Systema Naturae, " in the 

 British Muséum, carnes the autograph of Sir Joseph Banks, a 

 natural ist Maecenas, ancl Président of the Royal Society, of {he 

 eightetnth and early nineteenth centuries. Grub Street Peter 

 Pmdar politely clubs him " Président of Flies, '" and holds him 

 up to ridicule m a laboured and foolish satire, descriptive of a 

 butterfly hunt for " The Emperor of ÏMorocco, " our " Purple 

 Emperor. " He concludes that a person who could take an 

 interest in pursuing a butterfly must be a lunatic. Educated 

 opinion was hardly more encouraging. Shenstone combined an 

 abundant love for his garden with an astonishing ignorance of 

 -the insect pests which preyed upnn it. He, toc, points his feeble 



